which I daily pray for, should awaken Luther to us before the Last Day, the first task he would find, in respect of that degenerate and spurious Protestantism, would be, in his somewhat rugged manner, to-protest against it.'

A similar, or perhaps still more reckless temper, is to be traced elsewhere, in passages of a gay, as well as grave character. This is the conclusion of a letter from Vienna, in 1807.

'We have Tragedies here which contain so many edifying maxims, that you might use them instead of Jesus Sirach, and have them read from beginning to end in the Berlin Sunday Schools. Comedies, likewise, absolutely bursting with household felicity and nobleness of mind. The genuine Kasperl is dead, and Schikander gone his ways; but here, too, Bigotry and Superstition are attacked in enlightened Journals with such profit, that the people care less for Popery than even you in Berlin do; and prize, for instance, the Weihe der Kraft, which has also been declaimed in Regensburg and Munich to thronging audiences, - chiefly for the multitude of liberal Protestant opinions therein brought to light; and regard the author, all his struggling to the contrary unheeded, as a secret Illuminatus, or at worst an amiable Enthusiast. In a word, Vienna is determined, without loss of time, to overtake Berlin in the career of improvement; and when I recollect that Berlin, on her side, carries Porsten's Hymn-book with her, in her reticule, to the shows in the Thiergarten; and that the ray of Christiano-catholico-platonic Faith pierces deeper and deeper into your (already by nature very deep) Privy-councillor Mamsell, I almost fancy that Germany is one great madhouse; and could find in my heart to pack up my goods, and set off for Italy, to-morrow morning;— not, indeed, that I might work there, where follies enough are to be had too; but that, amid ruins and flowers, I might forget all things, and myself in the first place.' — Lebens-Abriss, s. 70.

To Italy accordingly he went, though with rather different objects, and not quite so soon as on the morrow. In the course of his wanderings, a munificent ecclesiastical Prince, the Fürst Primas von Dalberg, had settled a yearly pension

on him; so that now he felt still more at liberty to go whither he listed. In the course of a second visit to Coppet, and which lasted four months, Madame de Staël encouraged and assisted him to execute his favorite project; he set out, through Turin and Florence, and on the 9th of December 1809, saw, for the first time, the capital of the world!' Of his proceedings here, much as we should desire to have minute details, no information is given in this narrative; and Hitzig seems to know, by a letter, merely, that he knelt with streaming eyes over the graves of St. Peter and St. Paul.' This little phrase says much. Werner appears likewise to have assisted at certain 'Spiritual Exercitations' (Geistliche Uebungen); a new invention set on foot at Rome for quickening the devotion of the faithful, consisting, so far as we can gather, in a sort of fasting-and-prayer meetings, conducted on the most rigorous principles, the considerable band of devotees being bound over to strict silence, and secluded for several days, with conventual care, from every sort of intercourse with the world. The effect of these Exercitations, Werner elsewhere declares, was edifying to an extreme degree; at parting on the threshold of their holy tabernacle, all the brethren embraced each other, as if intoxicated with divine joy; and each confessed to the other, that throughout these precious days he had been, as it were, in heaven; and now, strengthened as by a soul-purifying bath, was but loath to venture back into the cold weekday world.' The next step from these Tabor-feasts, if, indeed, it had not preceded them, was a decisive one: 'On the 19th of April, 1811, Werner had grace given him to return to the Faith of his fathers, the Catholic !'

Here, then, the crowning mercy' had at length arrived! This passing of the Rubicon determined the whole remainder of Werner's life, which had henceforth the merit, at least, of entire consistency. He forthwith set about the pro

fessional study of Theology; then, being perfected in this, he left Italy in 1813, taking care, however, by the road, to supplicate, and certainly not in vain, the help of the Gra cious Mother at Loretto; and after due preparation, under the superintendence of his patron, the Prince Archbishop von Dalberg, had himself ordained a Priest at Aschaffenburg, in June, 1814. Next, from Aschaffenburg he hastened to Vienna; and there, with all his might, began preaching; his first auditory being the Congress of the Holy Alliance, which had then just begun its venerable sessions. 'The novelty and strangeness,' he says, 'nay, originality of his appearance, secured him an extraordinary concourse of hearers.' He was, indeed, a man worth hearing and seeing; for his name, noised abroad in many-sounding peals, was filling all Germany from the hut to the palace. This, he thinks, might have affected his head; but he had a trust in God, which bore him through.' Neither did he seem anywise anxious to still this clamor of his judges, least of all to propitiate his detractors: for already, before arriving at Vienna, he had published, as a pendant to his Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Strength,' a pamphlet, in doggrel metre, entitled, the Consecration of Weakness,' wherein he proclaims himself to the whole world as an honest seeker and finder of truth, and takes occasion to revoke his old 'Trinity,' of art, religion, and love; love having now turned out to be a dangerous ingredient in such mixtures. The writing of this Weihe der Unkraft was reckoned by many a bold but injudicious measure, a throwing down of the gauntlet when the lists were full of tumultuous foes, and the knight was but weak, and his cause, at best, of the most questionable sort. To reports, and calumnies, and criticisms, and vituperations, there was no limit.

6

What remains of this strange eventful history may be summed up in few words. Werner accepted no special charge

in the Church; but continued a private and secular Priest; preaching diligently, but only where he himself saw good, oftenest at Vienna, but in summer over all parts of Austria, in Styria, Carinthia, and even Venice. Everywhere, he says, the opinions of his hearers were 'violently divided.' At one time, he thought of becoming Monk, and had actually entered on a sort of noviciate; but he quitted the establishment rather suddenly, and, as he is reported to have said, 'for reasons known only to God and himself.' By degrees, his health grew very weak; yet he still labored hard both in public and private; writing or revising poems, devotional or dramatic; preaching, and officiating as father-confessor, in which last capacity he is said to have been in great request. Of his poetical productions during this period, there is none of any moment known to us, except the Mother of the Maccabees (1819); a tragedy of careful structure, and apparently in high favor with the author, but which, notwithstanding, need not detain us long. In our view, it is the worst of all his pieces; a pale, bloodless, indeed quite ghostlike affair; for a cold breath as from a sepulchre chills the heart in perusing it: there is no passion or interest, but a certain woestruck martyr zeal, or rather frenzy, and this not so much storming as shrieking; not loud and resolute, but shrill, hysterical, and bleared with ineffectual tears. To read it may well sadden us: it is a convulsive fit, whose uncontrollable writhings indicate, not strength, but the last decay of it.*

* Of his Attila (1808), his Vier-und-zwanzigste Februar (1809), his Cunegunde (1814), and various other pieces written in his wanderings, we have not room to speak. It is the less necessary, as the Attila and Twenty-fourth of February, by much the best of these, have already been forcibly, and, on the whole, fairly characterized by Madame de Staël. Of the last-named little work we might say, with double emphasis, Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet: it

Werner was, in fact, drawing to his latter end: his health had long been ruined; especially of later years, he had suffered much from disorders of the lungs. In 1817, he was thought to be dangerously ill; and afterwards, in 1822, when a journey to the Baths partly restored him; though he himself still felt that his term was near, and spoke and acted like a man that was shortly to depart. In January, 1823, he was evidently dying: his affairs he had already settled; much of his time he spent in prayer; was constantly cheerful, at intervals even gay. 'His death,' says Hitzig,' was especially mild. On the eleventh day of his disorder, he felt himself, particularly towards evening, as if altogether light and well; so that he would hardly consent to have any one to watch with him. The servant whose turn it was did watch, however; he had sat down by the bedside between two and three next morning (the 17th), and continued there a considerable while, in the belief that his patient was asleep. Surprised, however, that no breathing was to be heard, he hastily aroused the household, and it was found that Werner had already passed away.'

In imitation, it is thought, of Lipsius, be bequeathed his Pen to the treasury of the Virgin at Mariazell, as a chief instrument of his aberrations, his sins, and his repentance.' He was honorably interred at Enzersdorf on the Hill, where a simple inscription, composed by himself, begs the wanderer to pray charitably for his poor soul;' and expresses a trembling hope that, as to Mary Magdalen, 'because she loved much,' so to him also much may be forgiven.'

6

We have thus, in hurried movement, travelled over Zacharias Werner's Life and Works; noting down from the for

has a deep and genuine tragic interest, were it not so painfully protracted into the regions of pure horror. Werner's Sermons, his Hymns, his Preface to Thomas à Kempis, &c., are entirely unknown

to us.